Jangebe community in the Talata Mafara Local Government Area of Zamfara State have been thrown in angry protest over the abduction of over 300 schoolgirls by bandits on Friday.
The youths have blocked the access roads to the community, burning tires and preventing officials and journalists from gaining access into the community.
Confirming the incident, a Kawage village resident revealed that two of his daughters Mansura and Sakina were enrolled in the same school and he was going there to confirm the abduction.
“I’m on my way to Jangebe now to see the situation myself. I was told they invaded the school around 1 am,” he said.
The spokesman for the State Police Command, SP Muhammad Shehu, told reporters: “Give me some time, I can’t say anything now.”
The Zamfara incident comes a week after gunmen struck the Government Secondary School in Kagara, Niger State, abducting 47 school pupils, teachers and workers, who have yet to be rescued as of Friday.
In defence, popular Islamic cleric Sheikh Ahmad Gumi has said the abductors of the Zamfara schoolgirls were not the bandits with whom he had recently engaged in the Zamfara forests.
In a short telephone interview with The Government, Gumi said the kidnapping was carried out by a Zamfara splinter group of bandits.
The Islamic scholar, who claimed to have reached out to the bandit leaders he had recently encountered, categorically said, “They were not behind the kidnap of the girls.”
Sheikh Gumi simply said, “maybe,” when asked if he would go to Zamfara to meet the bandits for talks and plea for the release of the school girls.
BBC Hausa has also stated that the attackers were over 100 and they met only one guard who fled when they started shooting.
The witness also revealed that the attackers shouted ‘Allahu Akbah’ before as they shot and took the girls.
Source: Sahara Reporters
